I don’t see a case here. This is just abuse of power.
Tunick provided this code to an agent, who entered it on the phone, after which “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart.” All data on the phone was gone, but authorities confiscated it anyway.
They should be required to prove that such an OS was installed on the phone, that such a duress code was configured, and that it was the one provided, otherwise that was clearly a glitch in the phone, a cosmic ray bit flip, or the agent fumbling ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Device profiles can also wipe a phone after failed attempts (among many other things). The most common way for this is signing into your work’s 365 and accepting to add the device. This is so company data is automatically or remotely wiped should anything go wrong.
Can’t be responsible when it left his custody, right?
Yeah, they must have entered the wrong one
Does the GrapheneOS data-wipe actually wipe ALL data including the OS (presumably bricking the phone), or does it just delete personal data (thus just boots back up and appears like any brand new phone awaiting setup)? If the latter, seems like they could still identify the OS fairly easily. At which point it just kinda follows that, yeah, the entered PIN was a duress code, which is a known feature of the OS. Of course, I’m no lawyer, so I’m not sure how hard the rest would be to prove after identifying the OS.
I was a bit talking out of my ass there. Also at this point not even being judicially right protects you I guess.
Ah, fair enough.
